Goblins and Ghosties by Maggie Pearson

Selkie’s Revenge
    Scotland
    There was a crofter living on the west coast of Scotland. His wife had died, leaving him with a baby girl to bring up, so now he toiled, day after day, all alone. Growing vegetables on the poor little scrap of land attached to the croft. Spreading his nets along the seashore in the hope of catching enough fish to make a trip to the market worthwhile.
    Life would have been a bit easier if the seals hadn’t kept helping themselves. Time and again he came down to find a great hole in his net and not so much as a fish or two left for his own supper.

    It made him angry. It made him wild. When he found a seal pup caught in the net, he didn’t think twice, he just knocked it on the head.
    He felt bad about it a moment after, when he saw the pup was dead, for he was not a violent man. He felt worse still when he looked up and saw another seal with its head poking out of the water, watching him with big sad eyes.
    â€˜It looked so like a human mother grieving,’ he told the market women the next day, ‘it put me in mind of the stories my grandmother used to tell of the seal people – the selkies.’
    â€˜You’re turning fanciful,’ the market women said, ‘and no wonder − living alone on the croft with only a toddler for company.’
    â€˜Still, I know I never should have done such a thing. I don’t know what came over me.’
    â€˜If you’re not careful, you’ll be turning into a grumpy old man before your time,’ the women said. ‘What you both need is a woman about the place. Someone to come in each day and mind the child and the house, so that you can take the boat out the way you used to. You’d easily be able to pay her wages from what you made selling the extra fish.’
    â€˜Maybe,’ he nodded. ‘I’ll think about it.’
    A knock came at the door the very next morning. It seemed that the market women had been busy spreading the word, not giving him a chance to think about the idea for long enough to say no.
    A young woman stood there. Big brown eyes, she had, and long dark hair plastered close to her head by the soft rain that was falling, though she didn’t seem to mind it.
    He had the strangest feeling that they’d met before, though for the life of him he couldn’t say where or when.
    â€˜I heard you were looking for some help around the house,’ she said, smiling past him at the little girl.
    The little girl smiled back and the crofter felt a pang of sadness. How long was it since his daughter had smiled at him that way? It was true what the market women said. He had been turning into a grumpy, unlovable old man without even knowing it.
    So it was settled. The woman (whose name, she told him, was Mairi) would come early each day except Sunday and leave in the evening after dinner.
    It was good to pick up his old life again. To put out to sea, feel the wind in his hair and taste the salt spray. To come home from market with money in his pocket, knowing there’d be a fire going and dinner ready on the table. Sometimes, he’d hear Mairi singing to the child as he worked the vegetable patch. Strange, haunting songs they were, such as he’d never heard before.
    Sometimes, coming into the house, he’d find her and the little girl with their heads together, whispering secrets.
    Other times they’d be gone all day, down to the shore as like as not.
    â€˜Mairi’s teaching me to swim,’ the little girl said, her eyes shining.

    â€˜She loves the water,’ said Mairi.
    And he felt again that pang of sadness, a feeling that, little by little, his child was being stolen away from him. Even when Mairi wasn’t there, the child would say ‘Mairi did this,’ and ‘Mairi said that.’ Whenever she said ‘we’, she meant Mairi and her. No room for him. No need.
    He fell to wondering: what did he know about this woman, apart from her